The present disclosure relates generally to online advertising auctions and, more particularly, to systems and methods for optimizing floor prices in auctions to serve advertisements to impression consumers.
Current yield management offerings in the online ad auction space tend to either lack functionality or be overly complex and difficult to optimize for best results. For impression sellers, complicated yield management rules and unsophisticated floor pricing logic make revenue maximization more of a guessing game than an educated endeavor. Further, impression buyers often find floor pricing mechanisms to be confusing black boxes and prefer pure second price auctions instead. However, uniform auction logic is unlikely to be both efficient and incentive-compatible to all buyers and all sellers in all situations. For example, although buyers typically prefer second price auctions to first price auctions, second price auctions with revenue-maximizing hard floors are generally worse for most buyers because they reduce delivery. Moreover, many sellers prefer to retain the advantages derived from complex yield management rules.